Often hailed as the best TV show of all time, the legacy of The Wire is hard to disagree with. As one of the flagship shows of HBO's early 2000s output, it's a show that changed the prestige TV landscape as we know it. And while it's not quite the greatest for me, it's still an incredible 60 episode crime epic that dissects so many issues affecting Baltimore and American society at large, and I couldn't recommend it enough as both a commentary on the ills of the system and a hugely enjoyable paranoid thriller in itself. Baltimore is the main character in The Wire, and I know it's a cliché to say the setting feels like a member of the cast, but if any show was worthy of that description, it is absolutely this one. At times David Simon gets so involved in the details of the city that Baltimore becomes the only character in the show, and all of the various cops, gangsters and politicians feel like contradicting aspects of its personality
The size of The Wire is immense and even slightly intimidating at times, especially with how intricate and small all of the moving pieces are. It's a show that invites analysis, encouraging you to take your time with it and invest in the minute shifts in the city's landscape with the promise that these insights will stack on top of each other and turn each season into a blistering comment on the state of the city. It forgoes the flashiness and sensationalism of other cop shows in favour of quiet scenes of characters watching, listening and discussing. It's slow and deliberate, and although that might make it sound like a tough sell, the beauty of The Wire is that it gives you back exactly what you put into it. The big story beats happen slowly, often without a huge amount of fanfare, but by making you invest in the little moments, The Wire makes the more radical shifts resonate even more. Change isn't immediate, but it's constantly happening, and the show forces the viewer to pay as much attention to those incremental movements as the bigger beats they inspire
Structurally it's often been compared more to a novel than to conventional TV (or at least conventional TV in 2002), and I wouldn't disagree with that. Each season feels like its own distinct chapter, moving the ballad of Baltimore forward while still honing in on one of the city's many sectors. We start by following the gangs in the projects, before moving to the docks, the mayor's office, the schools and finally end up in the newsroom of the Baltimore Sun. This approach gives the show a much broader and diverse scope, but following the same key characters through this really drives the point home that all of these different worlds are interconnected limbs of the city of Baltimore. They have different goals and are composed of different kind of people, but ultimately are plagued with the same issues, and therein lies the show's point: nobody benefits from a broken system
And while David Simon's style is well worn and familiar at this point, The Wire still feels fresh and impactful all these years later. The criticism of the institutions, especially the police, hits harder than ever in the current landscape, as do the frank and often non-judgmental portraits of the people operating within them. This is a show about how inherently dysfunctional most organisations are, and how they frequently let down the people they were put in place to serve. This is especially relevant in the show's standout fourth season, a sobering look inside the American education system that never sacrifices the humanity in its scorching criticisms of institutional failure. That constant focus on how people are affected by the failures of institutions is absolutely paramount to preventing The Wire from ever feeling like a lecture; it has a lot to say but it only works so well because it always feels so utterly alive and so tuned in to the real effect that everything in the story has on the characters. As Cool Lester Smooth reminds us early on, we need to pay attention to everything, because all the pieces matter
And as far as those pieces go, The Wire has one hell of a cast, definitely one of the best for the kind of show this is. The bench is deep here, from the incredible regular players in the detail (Dominic West, Wendell Pierce, Sonja Sohn and my personal favourite Clarke Peters) to the who's who of Baltimoreans brought to life by the likes of Idris Elba, Aiden Gillen and Andre Royo. But the standout is undoubtedly Michael K. Williams. His Omar stands as one of the most unforgettable and important characters on TV, a would-be caricature in the wrong hands who ended up being the show's greatest creation. Omar is a flawed, vulnerable man who the show never makes any attempt to redeem, instead presenting him exactly how he is because David Simon knows that people are made of so many contradicting pieces. Without Omar, television would be infinitely less rich, and he remains the defining role from an artist taken from us way too soon. It's characters like him that I think keep people coming back to this show, because of the dedication to telling an honest story about realistic and compelling people. Even with everything it inspired, The Wire still feels somehow revolutionary
Again, maybe an incredibly dense, glacially slow exploration of systemic inadequacy doesn't sound like your next binge, but The Wire is also just miraculously engaging television. By creating a world that's so real and full of organic, three-dimensional characters, Simon has ensured that investing in this world reaps huge rewards. Everything is interesting here, constantly demanding your attention and rewarding your patience with some of the most nuanced storytelling on TV. It lacks any big scraps or setpieces, but if you like your thrillers paranoid and taut, there's plenty of excitement to be found here. This is a show that primarily engages your mind, but there's also just something so exciting about Simon's slow-burning rage, too. It's angry, but never resigns itself to bitterness, and it takes care to aim its scorn at the systems that deserve it most. These are the kind of issues that are unfortunately still relevant today, but it's cathartic to see how hard The Wire pushes back and exposes these issues as casual but unforgivable injustices
At time of writing, The Wire has recently been named the best TV show of the 21st century by the BBC, and it's not hard to see why. It's a show that, along with some other key HBO series, redefined what TV as an artform could be, and its enduring legacy and the amount of love it continues to receive are further testaments to the lasting power of The Wire. It's a patient, honest show that paints an entire city from the people right up to the systems that need to do better, and when it hits into a key dramatic beat, it roars off the screen. It's slow but deliberate, and the more you watch the more it becomes clear that the show is teaching you how to watch it; stick with its rhythms and trust in David Simon's meticulous vision and you'll find yourself immersed in one of the smartest and deepest police dramas around. And while I still don't think it's the greatest show ever made, I can certainly see why it wears that label. It's a hell of an experience, and I envy everyone who hasn't seen it for being able to watch it fresh
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